Sirine Fattouh

Sirine Fattouh puts into perspective the profound effects left by the war on Lebanon, her country of birth.  She fled the combat with her entire family in 1989.  Her work questions the way in which her memories have formed through the connections that she has renewed with her country since her exile.  It also examines the collective memory of the Lebanese who have remained there,   which plays a determining role in the make-up of their current identity. Bearing this in mind, she elects a stripped-down art form, which approaches the style of a documentary, and almost resembles archive material in its elimination of any fictional or aesthetic element in order to force the viewer to  face up to the reality which confronts them.  Sirine Fattouh means however to imprint a political dimension into her work: for example, in Perdu/Gagné, she gives a voice to the Lebanese women “who have rarely if ever had the chance to utter or express their own opinion.”

Sirine Fattouh was born in Beirut in 1980. She currently lives in Paris, where she gained her DNSEP (Diplome National Superieur d’Expression Plastique) from Paris Cergy University in 2006.  It was in the course of an exchange with the ALBA (Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts) which came up in 2005 that she produced her first videos.  Her works have since been exhibited in France and Lebanon, during  the Jeune Création event in La Villette, Paris (2008), at the French Cultural Centre in Beirut, at the Gallery Michel Journiac, Paris (2009) at the Beirut Art Centre (2009) and at the Biennial of Contemporary art in Bourges, France (2010).  Also a PHD student in Arts and the Science of Art at the University of Paris 1 (Pantheon-Sorbonne), where she has been teaching Visual Arts since 2005,  Sirine Fattouh is affiliated with the Centre for the Study and Research in Visual Arts,  the CERAP .